


Orange as the Sunrise

by Anonymous



Category: Original Work
Genre: Extra Treat, M/M, Re-Enchantment of the World, Vore, consensual vore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-24 09:48:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20905655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Dragons and groundlings don't always comprehend each other, but Tabra and Urnin have reached a very special kind of understanding.





	Orange as the Sunrise

**Author's Note:**

  * For [timbre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/timbre/gifts).

"The mother-beast is migrating," Tabra noted. "The islands have frozen over for the winter."

Urnin lowered his neck to address him, uncoiling his tail as if it was minor news. "How do you hear that?"

"The heralds below announced it. Any shadow of wings is rare, these days."

"Your human king leads in a time of peace," said Urnin. "If he were as terrible as the others, this would not be news."

"You could have deposed any of them if you wanted," Tabra reminded him.

"And be what? Lord of ashes? Unlike some, I do not need to sit on a pile of gems."

"You only say that because there's no throne that would fit you."

"Show me that she-flyer," Urnin teased, "and I'll show you the bed where I would sit and lay."

"You can go to her," said Tabra. "Mate with her. I'd...miss you, but I understand."

"It is not that easy." Urnin curled up on his haunches; his claws tapped irritably against the stones. It was the sort of gesture that had scared Tabra when he'd first ascended the bluffs. Now he found it charming. Even dragons, ancient and powerful as they were, could be impatient with human misunderstandings.

"She's kind of hard to miss," Tabra pointed out. "I mean, she's, you know. Your size."

"Do you think, groundling, that I am impotent and blind? If the islander gave the word, I would rut her this day."

"I would never underestimate your vision," Tabra said. "In body or in mind."

"You can fill a human body with your tool, but a woman will not bear a child unless it is her season. A dragon may lay an egg, but it will not quicken if I have not the..._ilhaor_, the light."

"The light?" Tabra repeated.

"Do you know, groundling, why it is that our hatchings have been so far between?"

"There are many reasons," said Tabra. He did not need a herald to tell him that; long before he had dared the bluffs, he had learned what he could of dragons. He was no mage nor infantryman, but he remembered what he could. "There were many wars among your kind, long before our people came here, and...and the mothers lay more eggs, because some of the children would die to war. Then Queen Nemenda exiled the wizards, and you did not have enough spellcasters to help tend your crops. So a few moved to the islands, and the rest died out altogether."

"Pah!" A flicker of smoke from Urnin's nostrils was his version of a snicker. "Sometimes you are such a groundling, to speak as if your queens could slaughter us. Yes, the mothers had more children in war, but that was not to replace their lost ones. It was because their mates had killed, destroyed honorable rivals who gave their lives in the slaughter. Only when their fire was lit from the bloodshed were they full of ilhaor, ready to father again."

"So--you have to kill someone to have children? But that doesn't make sense, the population would never stabilize."

"Has the stag fleeing the wolf no honor? Do the beasts of the sea not delight in the water, before the fire claims them? We had our meat and we had our seed. It is your chieftains with their civilization and peacemaking who claim to rule justly, but who choke us with their pride."

"I'm sorry."

"Do not claim guilt that is not your own. You did not place this king on the chair of power, did you?"

"I've been busy," Tabra admitted, and another puff of smoke greeted him in return.

* * *

"What if you did burn down the palace, though?" Tabra asked.

"Mm?" Urnin was gazing at the sky, as if to find the outline of the island dragon amid the clouds.

"You could get strong, get your--ilhaor from killing the king. And then you'd be able to have a child, help keep your species going."

"We would not go very far," said Urnin, "with a large horde of humans blaming me for anarchy."

"We've had worse kingslayers," Tabra reminded him.

"And you? What would your people make of you?"

"There are worse things than being a dragon's companion. Maybe they'd make me the new king! That way they'd know you'd leave the new palace alone."

"Tabra, my groundling, I adore you too fiercely to make you the king of that rabble."

"You're too kind," Tabra said. It stirred something in him; Urnin, for all the fire in his breath and heart, had limits. There were lines he would not cross, as deep as any magic.

He fell asleep, as he had so many times, against Urnin's scales. The dragon was well between molts. Tabra had once been patient, marvelling that he understood Urnin enough to experience part of life on the dragon's timescale. But that patience had given way to his desire to pull at the dead scales and, in one piece, rip them off, until something raw and new shone under the sun.

* * *

Tabra and Urnin had spoken of many things--squabbling over how to find human food amid the caves, mocking the courtiers and armies below, lamenting the exodus of wizards. And, of course, of intimacy, of how they could navigate the awkwardness of skin and scales and smells to best please each other. Yet when it came to matters of the utmost closeness, of a true union of bodies, Tabra felt himself fumbling for speech.

"If I hadn't seen all the hexcasters driven out of this range," Urnin mused, "I'd say you were under a muting jinx. What ails you?"

"I could not--not fight you, not as an equal."

There was no responding puff of smoke that time, only a tightening of Urnin's tail in concern. "Were you planning to take up arms?"

"No! I mean, I would never turn against you, there's nothing that could make me fight you. Or go to war. And even if I did, you could incinerate me in a moment."

"A humble groundling. Now I've seen it all."

"I mean, I'm not...an honorable opponent for you."

"Have the humans asked you to duel me in their name? I'll eat them."

"Would that gain you ilhaor?"

"No sooner than your king would knight you for swatting at mosquitoes. What are you playing at?"

"I want--" He had climbed the bluff before knowing Urnin as a lover or a friend, Tabra reminded himself. This would be no harder. "I want you to eat me. I want to give myself to you. If it would help, let you keep your people alive, keep the magic."

For a long moment Urnin said nothing. Tabra watched each scale prickle, stiffening and then settling to rest. "You are no spellcaster. What is it to you?"

"The humans below don't care. They think we live in a time of marvels because they build buildings and forge weapons without magic, but there's nothing grand or glorious about that. I'd take a blow for you in a battle, if I could. And I know you'd do the same for me! But there are more of us than there are of you, and--I don't think it's right to watch you die out, not if I could do something."

Urnin stared again, looking through Tabra as much as at him, down to the faint lines below that mapped the farmlands beyond the nearest town.

"I mean, maybe I'm wrong," Tabra rushed on. "You've told me more than enough I'm just a groundling, I don't know the first thing about how dragons work. If ilhaor doesn't work that way, just tell me to shut my mouth and I'll go back to minding my own business--"

"There would be much honor in this task," Urnin interrupted. "Much honor. But your lives are already brief. Do not curtail yours for my sake."

"You're just one dragon," said Tabra. "One wonderful dragon. But magic, that's bigger even than you, than any of us."

* * *

It took longer than Tabra would have liked for Urnin to depart and return. Though Urnin had always been kind to him, he was faintly amused by the fact that the dragon had wanted to meet the mother-beast first and confirm that she was willing to try and mate.

"It still may fail," Urnin warned him. "The egg may be weak and thin, or she may crush it with the sleeping madness, or perhaps the child will drown amid the islands."

"I know," Tabra said. "Our lives are brief, you said so. We can't always see what will come to pass. That's no reason not to live."

For the last time, he had stripped bare in front of Urnin. It had been years since he'd seen Urnin as a danger, and at once he was reminded of all the ways the dragon could destroy him at an instant, or prolong the sweet agony: tear him apart with his claws, soar with Tabra in his rasp and then dash him against the mountain, or breathe fire that consumed him from the outside in. For a moment he felt jealous that he could only succumb once.

But if Urnin would grieve their parting, their unity, it was only right that Tabra should bear a fraction of that grief, too. The pain would not last, he knew, not with a much more exquisite pain yet to come.

Urnin's tongue reached down and bore him up. It was all of a piece, not a mosaic of scales. Tabra was lowered against a front tooth, sharp but gentle, that drew blood in his leg. Again he wondered what it would be like to have the limb torn free, but let the question subside and give way to the present.

He folded in on himself, fell into darkness. Nothing was tangible but Urnin's warmth and rhythmic breath. They savored each other, wet readiness pressed against eager quietude. The world would never lack for magic, Tabra knew, not while such devotion and trust were real.


End file.
